Preferences window doesn't match on a 15'' Laptop screen and height isn't resizeable

What's your screen resolution? For me on a smaller monitor, the dialog fits just fine (Beta build), it's exactly the right for the Canvas tab. and it's resizable as expected - that is, I can make it bigger but not smaller.

I wouldn't expect lowering resolution to help, increasing it almost certainly would.

Your resolution is above our minimum stated (1024x600) so things should work. But I guess some of the new things added to the Preferences dialog since the alpha have pushed it just enough bigger to no longer fit. We should see about rearranging the Canvas tab to save space.

But to be clear: Alpha didn't allow you to reduce the size beyond what was needed to make the controls on the Canvas tab all fit, did it? Again, there should be no difference in resizability - dialogs can always be expanded, but can't be reduced beyond their minimum. The only thing that changed here AFAIK is what that actual minimum is - it grew to accommodate the new zoom default controls.

Can you confirm this - the dialog on Alpha was not resizable to be too small for the Canvas tab, the dialog on the beta is resizable to go larger, and the only real difference here is how much space that Canvas tab actually takes up? Assuming all this true, fix would be just a matter of rearranging the controls on the tab to save space.

The minimum of 1024x600 is not enough since quite a while anymore

Sounds reaosnable, but then, we should document what the minimum actually is. That was taken from the Download page.

It also depends on the scaling used

I'm working on a fix. In the meantime, as a temporary workaround, try going back to that MuseScore Preferences tab, reducing the font size from 11 to 10 or 9, and then pressing Enter to accept the change (since the OK button isn't visible).

BTW, was 11 the default font size on your system, or had you increased it previously?

The Windows default changed from 8 to 9, no wonder that 11 is too large

This is Linux, though. I'm trying to find out whether 11 is an actual default on some (or maybe even all) Linux systems.

Default or not: it is too large

I believe MuseScore takes its font size from whatever is set within the OS. This wasn't working correctly in older releases but I think it is now, maybe as of around 3.3?

I rather doubt 11 pt is the default on any Linux distribution unless maybe there is one that specifically caters to people to visual impairment? On systems with high DPI displays, it is sometimes necessary to crank up default font size to overcome limitations in how automatic scaling works. Specifying 11 pt might actually result in 8 pt actual size on screen. However, that doesn't seem likely to be what is going on here. A 15" monitor at only 1366x768 hardly qualifies as high DPI - that/s right about the typical 100 DPI if my math is correct.

How does this look? I tried several different layouts and this one was the least objectionable to me.

Looks good to me

A difference in size of the MuseScore Preferences dialog between 3.5.0 Beta and the 4.0 nightly is expected, as the PR that recently made the dialog bigger in the 3.x branch hasn't been merged into the master (4.x) yet (AFAIK).

While you're here, could you please answer my earlier question: What is the default font size on your system as it appears on the MuseScore Preferences dialog tab that you posted a screen shot of? Is it really 11 pt? Also, have you changed the Linux GUI font size from the default value on your system?

I'm asking because 11 pt seems large for a 1366×768-pixel screen.

Same problem here on Linux (Ubuntu 18.04), too. It might have to do with the default Gnome text scaling factor and its interplay with Qt.

My default scaling as reported by gsettings:

$ gsettings get org.gnome.desktop.interface text-scaling-factor
1.25

If I launch the app from CLI as follows:

QT_SCALE_FACTOR=0.8 ./MuseScore-3.5.0-Beta-x86_64.AppImage

the issue is fixed. You must change, though, the default font value in Preferences to a higher one than 11pt, or even 12pt.

Had come up in #308088: Preference window collapses when resizing again. See screenshots there, the dialog in 3.5 is just higher than in 3.4, due to some new settings on the Canvas tab regarding zoom settings

I can replicate this bug on Windows 10, 1920x1080 monitor, UI scaling 1.5x (i.e. the equivalent of a 1280x720 monitor without UI scaling).

On that same system, I also find that several other dialogs extend off the bottom of the screen: "Parts", "Mixer", and "Plugin Creator". "Instruments" and "Transpose" are just barely less tall than the screen. The "Style" dialog is too narrow for its contents, so the right-hand pane ends up with an unnecessary horizontal scrollbar (and incidentally, the left-hand list, and the list of text styles, are both at least twice as wide as they need to be).

Finally, the "View" menu is exactly the same height as the screen, which makes it impossible to switch to the "Add", "Format", "Tools", "Plugins" and "Help" menus while the "View" menu is open. This breaks flow if I'm navigating across all of the main menus while searching for a specific menu item.

Let me know if you'd like me to open separate issues for the above. I suspect all of these problems boil down to an unexpectedly large font-size-to-screen-size ratio.

What about @Spire42 's solution, is there a PR for it?
IMHO it looks very good and would be a nice change anyway.

No, there's no PR as far as I know

Me too at 1920 x 1080 . I hangs when i try to resize.

The program MuseScore3.exe version 0.0.0.0 stopped interacting with Windows and was closed. To see if more information about the problem is available, check the problem history in the Security and Maintenance control panel.
Process ID: 36f4
Start Time: 01d6c45020bd2d83
Termination Time: 4294967295
Application Path: C:\Program Files\MuseScore 3\bin\MuseScore3.exe
Report Id: 1fb0101d-7938-48af-8107-c4c2417a4d5a
Faulting package full name:
Faulting package-relative application ID:
Hang type: Top level window is idle

Not quite as nice looking as the version from @Spire42 , but leading to a dialog with less height, hopefully enough for 15" screens. Here the Canvas dialog in German (and dark theme), before (851x680):

after (859x609):

Added to PR https://github.com/musescore/MuseScore/pull/6958

Also nice, but maybe a bit less clear...
We may want to ask Tantacrul's advice.

I can't get @Spire42's exact layout, but a rather similar one:

However: that doesn't make the dialog any smaller, as now the Import dialog became the limiting factor

OK, reduced it even further, to now 859x547:

Fixed in branch 3.x, commit 58eba23359

Fix #306644: Preferences window doesn't match on a 15'' Laptop screen and height isn't resizeable

Automatically closed -- issue fixed for 2 weeks with no activity.